


Saints and Sinners

by soyforramen



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Character Study, Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 16:45:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16479200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soyforramen/pseuds/soyforramen
Summary: After all, Veronica Lodge was no saint.





	Saints and Sinners

Veronica Lodge was no saint. Her life was not devoted to preaching the good word, to doing good deeds, to helping those in need. She would never be a tragic figure, offering up her life so that others could live. She’d never been touched by the holy spirit, though she did let Antonio kiss her after Easter services in seventh grade. 

If she had been a saint, she would never have stood by while her father destroyed so many innocent lives. She never would have been so willfully ignorant of his sinful ways. Divine intervention would have graced her with the means to convince her father that fraud was abhorrent, greed a vice, theft a sin. Veronica would have been able to call upon St. Joseph to guide her father’s hand towards saving the community rather than destroying it in the pursuit of wealth.

After all, Joan of Arc was only 13 when she’d had her first vision of the heavens. At 13, Veronica Lodge’s only visions were of Prada, and Milan, and Hermes.

Her father’s deeds should have stayed in the past. Her father had been sentenced and, according to the greater state of New York and the United States Federal government, had served his time and repaid his debt to society. Hiram Lodge emerged from the federal penitentiary a free, penitent man, absolved of his sins through graft and bribery, like the Medici’s of yore. (Graft and bribery were only sins in the eyes of the Lord. Here on earth it was nothing more than another day at the office for Hiram Lodge.)

It had taken her a year and a half to come to terms with what her father had done. That her father was nothing more than a human made of flesh and blood. He was no god on earth, as she’d believed as a child. He was no longer a figure to idolize. He was corruption in human form, good only for destroying lives in the pursuit of wealth, with little regard for the fallout.  


And then he’d come back home. Her father, the man who raised her, who taught her right from wrong. The man who’d tucked her in at night, the man who’d snuck her lamb empanadas during Lent, the man who’d taught her how to drive on the busy streets of Manhattan. The father who claimed to love her. 

The father who showed his love with material goods and luxuries. Those present that, as she grew older, began to feel more like a bribe. Like a chain and a cage. Presents that felt more like guilt, presents that sent waves churning in her stomach as she wondered who’d been bankrupted to pay for the string of pearls around her neck.

When he’d returned, it was so easy to slip back into her old life of ignorance and frivolity. So easy to let him return to the role of protector and father. He brought financial stability back into their lives. He brought security, safety against the Serpents, the Mob. Against the Black Hood. He brought normalcy back into her life while the town and everyone around her had fallen apart.

It was so easy to plead ignorance of his misdeeds. Plausible deniability, after all, was the creed of all Lodge women.

Because Hiram Lodge was, after all, still her father. And Veronica had been tired of fighting against her past self and learned behaviors. She’d spent so long trying to be good for others, to be better for others. With her father’s arrival her old life slipped back around her like a tailor made gown, snug and secure. And she let herself pretend that he was repairing the broken ties between them, pretend he wanted to help the town. He’d made friends with Archie, as he’d promised. He’d offered her a better Riverdale, a better life than what she and her mother had without them..

And Veronica Lodge was never one to easily resist temptation. 

She was no angel. There were no wings on her back, no halo adorning her head. Gospel and godly words did not tumble from her lips, though gossip often did. She looked nothing like the angels that adorned Abuela Lodge’s walls, those blonde cherubs with milky white skin sent to bring good tidings to the unworthy people below. 

In one of their few stolen moments together, Archie had whispered into her hair and called her his guardian angel, his hope against the coming darkness. The words twisted deep, the adoring words quickly turning to sharp knives of guilt. Her father had been the one to do this to Archie, and all because she’d refused to act the demure disciple. 

When she thought about what her father had done, what her father continued to do, it hurt. It hurt even more to think of what little she’d done to stop him.

She’d left the Andrews’ house soon after, the tears falling from her eyes masked only by the rain. She’d wandered for a while, still unable to return to the penthouse suite where her father lurked. Instead, she found herself at her home away from home, at the restaurant she’d bartered from the Devil himself. It was a place she found pride in despite her aching feet and throbbing back. Every article of clothing she owned now carried with it a hint of used grease and cooked onion no matter when it was washed. It was a smell that brought her pride to know she was able to work this hard to save something she loved. It brought her hope that maybe, just maybe, she and Archie could make it out of this town alive.

And now she had returned to her home away from home, the second place in this god-forsaken town she actually felt safe in after the Andrews’ home. She stood in the entryway, soaked to the bone and unable to stop her tears. This late at night no one would care about her appearance. It was populated with late-night long-haul truckers and insomniacs jacked up on JIngle Jangle and coffee.

And, of course, Jughead. Still picking away at his novel about the darkness that seemed to shroud Riverdale. A novel that continued to warp and twist with the morbid happneings of the town around them. A novel where, she was almost certain, she’d become the villain.

She took a step towards the back office, but he’d already seen her in her smudged mascara and dripping hair, such a far cry from her normal composed self. In a surprising show of concern, he nodded to the chair next to him. Slowly, she walked towards the seat, knowing he’d be the last person in this town to want to hear her troubles. After all, she’d been the one attempting to gas-light him, the one trying to convince everyone around them that he was full of conspiracy theories and slander against her father. 

Conspiracy theories that turned out to only be a scratch on the surface of her father’s machinations.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out when she was close enough for him to hear her. 

His hands jerked away from the keyboard. He turned his full attention towards her, surprised. “For what?”

For a long time she couldn’t answer. A thick, sticky glob of pain and guilt stuck in her throat, trapping all the words should should have said months ago, all the words she’d wanted to say before. Unable to tumble from her lips, her words transformed into more tears. Veronica collapsed onto the stool and cried onto the diner counter.

Jughead, typical male that he was, shifted in his seat, unable to do anything about her distress. Perhaps that was why she’d taken the seat next to him. They were close enough to know what the other was talking about, but not close enough for comfort. He gave her the space she needed, the space she hadn’t known she wanted. 

When her tears began to dry, she lifted her head only to find a coffee cup, still steaming, had been placed in front of her. She wrapped her hands around the heat, hot enough to verge on painful. He handed her a napkin and she dabbed at her cheeks. For once, she didn’t care who saw her out of makeup. 

“Latent Catholic guilt?” he asked.

She didn’t know if he was serious. She didn’t know if he was serious about anything other than Betty, and Archie, and his Serpent friends, really. 

But his words reminded her of all the masses she’d missed since moving to Riverdale. Of the comfort she took in the rote, prescribed rituals that only changed by its own accord. She’d never been the religious type - too independent, too strong-willed for the outdated views on the world, humanity, and women - but she liked the familiarity of knowing what to do and when. 

No matter how much the world changed, the Church held fast to its belief and faith in an immutable, infallible higher being. Faith in a father figure that wanted the best for his flock. Faith that he’d lead her to greener pastures, that he’d care for them and protect them against sin.

But just like her own father figure, the price of rebellion was almost greater than one could bear. 

Veronica cleared her throat and sipped at the coffee. Her throat was raw, sanded down by the screams she choked down daily so no one could hear. Warped by the fear and hatred and anger. At what, exactly, she was still figuring out. She only knew that most of it was directed at her father.

“I suppose so,” she said. “I am sorry, though. For not believing you about my father. And what he was doing to Riverdale.”

Next to her, Jughead shrugged. His fingers moved across the keyboard, sure of where they landed. When they stilled again, he spoke. “I get why you didn’t want to believe it. I’ve wanted to believe a lot of what my father’s said. Doesn’t mean it’s forgotten.”

“Or forgiven,” Veronica said softly. 

As long as she lived, she didn’t know whether this was something she could forgive herself for. She’d had the ability, the opportunity to sound the cry, to prove her parents were doing ill, to alert the proper authorities. And yet she’d made herself comfortable and nested in their ill-gotten gains, selfish and secure that she was untouchable.

The coffee was gone, and her words had fled. Jughead continued to write, and Veronica didn’t know if he’d even realized she’d left. She didn’t know if anyone would realize if she left this town besides Archie and her mother. She’d burned so many bridges this past year it was as if she wanted to create her own personal hell on earth. 

That didn’t mean things couldn’t change, though. That she couldn’t work to fix what she’d destroyed. Even if she was never forgiven, if she was never trusted again, she would try. 

No, Veronica Lodge was no martyr of yore. She was not ready or willing to throw herself on the funeral pyre that Riverdale was becoming. She was not able to lay atop the slow, smoldering embers of a town crumbling in on itself. She could not, would not cut off her nose to spite her face, no matter how just the cause may be. 

Veronica Lodge was not an angel, never a saint or martyr. Veronica Lodge was, through and through, a human with everything that meant. She was a human who made mistakes, who made bad decisions. Quite often she’d backed the wrong horse. She was a human who’d watched her idols fall from grace, the gods on earth turn into flesh and blood like her. 

She’d never be able to wash her hand of the blood her father had spilled, of the lives ruined by her family’s greed.

Veronica Lodge was no saint. But she was human enough to try.


End file.
